Dutch To Hear Testimony In El Al Jet Crash Inquiry

February 7, 1999|By MARLISE SIMONS The New York Times

AMSTERDAM — Henk Prijt can still hear the groan of the engines and the thunderous clap that changed his life one Sunday evening in October 1992, just before dinner time. Outside his windows, the world had turned red: A wrecked plane was on fire, a large apartment block was ablaze, human beings ran like living torches, and screams came from everywhere.

Prijt stayed on the site of the disaster for hours, pulling people from smoke-filled apartments, carrying some of the injured and helping firemen haul debris.

A month later, the metalworker, 49, fell ill with skin ailments, joint pains and breathing problems that persist today, more than six years after an El Al cargo plane lost two engines and lurched into a low-income housing complex in southern Amsterdam. Forty-three people died on the ground, some 80 apartments were destroyed, and another 150 were damaged.

Prijt and more than 1,100 other rescue workers and residents believe they were somehow contaminated that night by the burning aircraft or its mysterious cargo -- first described by El Al as "perfumes and machine parts" and finally revealed last October to include vats of chemicals that can be used in the manufacture of the deadly nerve gas sarin. That revelation prompted the Dutch Parliament to launch its first formal inquiry into the crash, which occurred shortly after the Boeing 747 took off from Amsterdam's airport en route to Tel Aviv.

The investigation, begun in November, is expected to hear some 70 witnesses, drawing together the reports of illness and allegations of a cover-up by El Al and the Dutch government that have inflamed public passions here for years.

"People feel manipulated; they trust nobody any more," said Bob van der Goen, a lawyer representing relatives of crash victims who have sought damages from Boeing and El Al. "They want no more evasion."

Even today, the mystery of the plane's cargo is not solved. When it was revealed by the newspaper NRC Handelsblad in October that elements needed to make sarin were on board, the Israeli government said the chemicals were destined for the Institute for Biological Research in Ness Ziona, south of Tel Aviv, whose work is secret.

Yet a further 20 tons of the 114-ton cargo are unidentified, and the relevant travel documents are missing. El Al has said this cargo was destined for the Israeli Ministry of Defense but it cannot disclose its nature for "reasons of national security." An Israeli Defense Ministry spokesman has said the freight consigned to the ministry did not include dangerous goods.

"How do you treat people if you have no idea what they were exposed to?" said Nizaar Makdoembaks, a physician whose family practice in the area includes numerous patients who believe their ailments are linked to some kind of chemical exposure or radiation. "People cannot prove anything, but the fear and the panic worsens their stress."

The parliamentary commission wants to know why El Al at first refused to hand over any waybills and the role of Israeli security agents who appeared at the site in protective gear within an hour after the crash.

Did they take the cockpit voice recorder, the black box, which is missing, or the plane's documents, which rescuers retrieved from the cockpit but which then disappeared? What is the agreement between the Dutch government and Israeli security and intelligence officials, who are often seen at Amsterdam's airport?

The Dutch government has produced reports but never answered all the nagging questions.

On Feb. 2, parliamentary investigators were astonished to hear a tape that was recorded a half-hour after the crash. In it, an El Al employee tells an Amsterdam airport traffic controller that the cargo included explosives, ammunition, toxic materials, gases and inflammable goods. The El Al employee asks to keep the information quiet, and the traffic controller is heard agreeing.

The current transport minister, Tineke Netelenbos, has supported parliament's inquiry, saying that "it is important that we establish quickly which materials from the plane were burned, at what temperature and what consequence they have on public health."

Police and firefighters who were at the crash site, which was crowded for four days, said the air was filled with a lethal cocktail, including burning kerosene, plastics and cargo from the plane, and smoldering asbestos from the ruined apartments.

Medical and other specialists are now stressing the dangers of depleted uranium, used as ballast in the plane's tail. In the 1980s, Boeing advised clients to discontinue use of depleted uranium. But Israel did not make the change in a number of its planes.